


The Once and Future Pokemon

by Cheating_Jumper



Series: Jumpchain [5]
Category: Jumpchain, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 12:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16576553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheating_Jumper/pseuds/Cheating_Jumper
Summary: No, Jumper; YOU are the Pokemon!





	1. The Making of a 'Mon

**Author's Note:**

> The title sounds a tad pretentious, but I couldn't think of anything better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The set up to the story, all the fiddly decision making bits

“Well that was exciting, wasn’t it?” Chan asked, grinning widely

“Exciting? Exciting?! You made my superpowered stalker my ex-girlfriend! She tried to have Sparkles killed!” I was very much not happy about that part, and could not stress it enough to this half peeled potato. 

“Half peeled potato? That’s not very nice,” Chan pouted, completely ignoring my complaint and focusing on the insulting descriptor I’d thought. “If you feel that way, I can just send you home if you like. All you said was you didn’t want to stay in that world.”

Huffy, petty little... so-and-so. I can’t even have private thoughts around her. 

“No, I’d like to move on to the next world you have planned,” I said before she could cut in and comment on my thoughts again. 

“Well then I’d stop thinking such nasty things darlin’” she said with a sniffy disapproving tone. “Come to my room in half an hour and I’ll have it ready for you”

She turned on her heel and walked away. I very quietly put my face in my hands when there was a click. I looked up and Chan was pointing at me what looked like a smartphone but with a distinctly concave lens covering the back. 

“360 degree image capture” she told me with a wink

I looked down and realised I was buck naked and dripping wet, still in my overly endowed female form. I sighed and shook my head. 

“I’ll see you in half an hour” I told her, walking to my Warehouse home for a quick shower and cuddle with Evil

 

 

* * *

 

 

Chan was waiting for me just inside the freestanding door in the Warehouse that led to her dark grey stone chamber. Why it wasn’t attached to my Warehome instead of twenty metres diagonally from the front door, I don’t know. Contrariness probably

“Took you long enough,” she said with a wry smile, looking slightly disappointed I was fully clothed again in my body mod default. “You’ll like the next jump, it’s Pokémon!”

She seemed very excited about it, but I was just confused. 

“Really? Pokémon again? Does this mean you’re making me use my world return thing, or is it for the anime instead of the games?” I asked. 

If it was for the anime, I was gonna smack some sense into Brock for making heart eyes and being creepy at every pretty girl and then try to get Jessie, James, and Meowth to leave Team Rocket. They were too nice at heart and far too ineffective to be part of the Pokémon mafia

“Neither. This time, you are the Pokémon” she said gleefully, handing me the tablet. 

“Me? So I get a trainer, or...” I trailed off as I looked at the jump document displayed on the screen. “Ah, right. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. I’ve only played the Super Mystery Dungeon, but it was a lot of fun. Except trying to get Mewtwo, that git kept using recover and was a real pain in the arse”

I sat on the stone floor and scrolled down. The first selection was “What Pokémon Are You?”

“Alrighty then, ummm I think I’d like to be... well I could go Charmander, but I already have Chazza and I want to bring him as my partner Pokémon,” I looked up at Chan, “I’m assuming I get a partner Pokémon? That’s a huge part of the game, palling around and exploring with a buddy.”

“You do,” Chan nodded, “but it won’t be Chazza, I’ve got someone already picked out specially for you.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. Chan’s last pick for me gave me a stalker psycho ex-girlfriend. Still, it’s not like I could do anything about it, she was in the driver's seat after all. 

“Alright, well I still won’t go Charmander. Can I pick any Pokémon? I think I wanna be Gastly” I said, but as soon as I touched the screen to try and input my choice, it showed a table with the standard choices from SMD with each of the pictures of Pokémon lighting up rapidly. “Oh come on, this is randomised? My Conduit power wasn’t!”

“True, but this is different. And far more entertaining for me” Chan grinned widely. “Don’t worry darlin’, whatever it lands on, you’ll be a Drop In with the same options later on and no discounts, so it doesn’t matter much what you get”

“Maybe not within the document, but I’ll be stuck as whatever for a decade, and I don’t like the chance I’ll end up as something from gen 5” I said, trying to use my bullet-time focus to get one I wanted, but the randomiser sped up as everything else seemed to slow down. I let things speed up again, and the randomiser sped up even more. 

“There’s no getting around this, whatever you get will be random” Chan said, sounding amused at my attempt

I sighed and tapped the screen, ready to take whatever I had to be. Mudkip’s picture filled the screen and did its happy animation from the game. Well that’s not too bad, I quite like the Mudkip line, dumb memes notwithstanding. 

A quick flip of the gender coin showed that I’d be a male again this time round. 

Apparently this place has only a small choice of location, because a triangle appeared with pictures of towns run by Pokémon on each point. A spin landed me in Treasure Town with the Exploration Teams here being part of the Wigglytuff Guild. Wigglytuff isn’t the first thought I have when it comes to small pink badasses, but since Kirby isn’t a Pokémon, Wiggles is as good as any other I suppose. 

 

Scrolling down showed I was given a pack of free skills to go with my new Pokéform. Four moves that draw from the same PP pool, muscle memory to let me use my new body with ease, a small physical stat increase to above human norm (which would be barely noticeable with my other boosters but I wasn’t turning down), combat diagnostics to let me gauge my HP & PP, and Pokéglot so I could talk to and understand Pokémon. I’d turned it down in the first jump because it was expensive and I wasn’t sure I wanted it; here it was free and something of a necessity, so I wasn’t turning it down again. 

I was assuming I could change moves in-jump, even if only after I evolved, but I still wanted good stuff straight off the bat, so after scanning the moves list provided, I picked Water Pulse, Mud Bomb, Waterfall, and Headbutt. Normally I’d pick an ice or poison move to cover my weakness, but I was an ice Conduit and I figured that was cover enough against Grass Pokémon. All up, my PP pool was 60 total which was nice. No moves of earth shattering power, but I could swap them out when I evolved, probably. 

After that were the skills & perks available to me, the first of which was free and fairly strange. It was Crush, and was exactly what it sounded like, giving my partner Pokémon a crush on me. I didn’t take it. If it happened, it happened, but I don’t want to force my partner, whoever Chan’s picked for that role, to have romantic feelings for me, and that’s what this perk would do. Really not comfortable with that. 

There were two 100 perks: Natural Instinct, which increased awareness, intuition, & muscle memory, and Multitalent, which buffed my endurance, boosted my PP by 50%, and meant I only needed four hours of sleep a day. Taking both put me at 2800. 

I could buy myself or my partner an evolution or two, but decided not to. Better, I think, to earn that one. 

Map Surveyor gave me a mental map and an infallible sense of direction for 200, and Move Expert gave me either a fifth move or a non-legendary signature move for 200. I grabbed both, and added Aqua Tail to my moveset. Move Expert and Multitalent brought my PP total to 105, a very respectable amount. 

Synchronised Souls was the only 300 thing. It was basically a soul bond between my partner and I, and without knowing my partner beforehand it wasn’t something I was comfortable taking. 

All-Terrain Hiker, on the other hand, was 350 and amazing, letting me and my party walk safely on any terrain, including lava, water, clouds, and unstable ground. I didn’t realise clouds were a terrain, but I’m not complaining at all. 

The final perk was Hyperkinesis for 400. It removed all lag in my reaction time, meaning I could move my body as fast as I could think with the only barrier being my body’s physical limits. I snapped that right up, leaving me with 1650CP going into the items section. 

First up, I and my partner both got an Explorer/Rescue Badge for free, which would allow me to teleport twice a day to the entry of a building I’m in and will do it automatically if I’m KO’d in a Mystery Dungeon. 

The first item was a 200 Wonder Map that self-updated, showed allies and enemies, and could zoom in and out. I took that and a 50 Treasure Bag, for which I imported my bag, and left me with 1400. 

Next were some fashion accessories that would definitely come in handy. I got two each of Aura Ribbons (boosts non-speed stats and matches the colour of your aura), Pecha Scarvess (immune to poison effects but not poison attacks), Persim Bands (immune to confusion effects), and Weather Scarves (immune to weather effects), and I picked up a Heal Ribbon for my partner since they wouldn’t have the healing factor I do. 

I also imported my hyperglasses as Goggle Specs for 200 to let me see hidden traps and caches, as well as invisible enemies. 

 

All that brought me down to 0CP left, so I went down to check out the drawbacks. 

I could only take two and they were ...different. The first I discarded out of hand since it meant that I didn’t have a Partner at all, even if it did give me 300. Half the others were chucked out as well since they prevented me from even taking the skills I’d already bought. Sure they’d free up more points, but it was counterproductive to do so. From the ones remaining, I decided to take Followed and Distrusted for a total of 300CP. The first made a rival team mess with and sabotage me, and the second made it so that Pokémon other than my partner would be slow to trust me. Both were doable and shouldn’t hinder me overmuch. 

With new CP under my belt, I went back up to the items and promptly added a Revive Seed Bag to my stash, bringing me right down to -50. Frowning at the weird price, I put back an Aura Ribbon to balance me out. I guess I’d just have to do without a pretty ribbon, I do have a handful of buffs already though. 

 

“Ok Chan, Mudkip me” I said, pressing the Insertion button

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split this part up into different chapters because I like the way it carries the story, but don't worry, it's all here


	2. Insertus Interruptus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some last yoctosecond notes from Chan

“One more thing,” Chan said in the moment between moments, as my self was transferred from one reality to the next, aware of nothing but the sensation of her voice. “You won’t be able to call your Poké-team out of the Warehouse for this Jump. Think of it like a mandatory drawback to pay for the freebies you got”

I could just tell she had that smug grin on her face as she told me that. It was bad form to leave it until the moment of insertion to say something, but I took it as payback for spending the last part of Infamous chilling in Antarctica. I guess watching someone penguin watch for a few years wasn’t exactly riveting entertainment.


	3. Jumping to the Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awful chapter title aside, this is the good bit with the actual story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final part of the trio of chapters. I quite like the way it sets out the story, I might do it this way more often

Mudkip! Mudkip Mud, Mudkip Kip Mud Kip Mudkip. Mudkip Mudkip Mudkip. Mudkip? Mud, Mudkip...

 

Ahem, sorry about that. After using only two syllables for the better part of a decade, it kind of becomes a habit, even after evolving. Which, by the way, took fricking ages! I knew that resolving the plot was the only way to unlock evolution, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a hint of it anywhere. At a guess, I was in the wrong country for it. 

Especially compared to the last one I visited, this world was quite peaceful. The only times I really had to fight were when I went dungeon diving or when Team BatsRule (made up of FUCKING ZUBATS) tried to mess with me or Pixie. 

Ah, Pixie. She was the partner Chan assigned me, the Alolan Vulpix (eventually) cum Ninetales. Yes, what you’re probably thinking is right, and again, yes, I didn’t realise until after. For all that I’m great at spotting tropes and patterns and such in everything else, I seem to have a massive blind spot when it comes to Chan’s actions. 

 

Regardless, I’ll stop faffing about and get to the meat of the story

 

* * *

 

I was feeling groggy, and I definitely hadn’t been inserted into a bed this time. I groaned and rolled over on the beach, coming face to face with the pure white furred face of an Alolan Vulpix. 

“What are you doing here? I didn’t think that regional variants existed in PMD” I muttered, sand still encrusted on my face. As far as first impressions go, out of universe knowledge isn’t the worst, but my phrasing could have been better

“I’m sorry, I was just trying to help” was her reply, and seeing how she cringed at my words made me immediately regret them. I forgot I was in a Pokémon world again, where everything from animal husbandry to global genocide was made kid friendly. After spending a decade in a gritty fighting game universe with people rarely doing anything without getting something in return, I was going to have to readjust to having people be nice at first stroke again. 

“It’s okay, I should be the one apologising. I just wasn’t expecting to see an ice Vulpix” I said, trying to wipe my face clean of sand. It didn’t do much, since Mudkips produce a thin veneer of mucus to keep from drying out, but at least the sand wasn’t in my mouth and eyes anymore. “I’m ...Kipper” I held out a forelimb after half a moment’s hesitation to think of a name. 

“I’m Pixie,” she said, shaking my hand-foot with a shy smile. “It’s alright, I guess. It took a while for Pokémon around here to get used to seeing a white Vulpix. I usually come out here to calm down or try to use Psych Up when I’m nervous. I don’t know that move though, so it usually fails. I just saw you get washed up on the beach and wanted to make sure you were alright.”

Her words came out as a nervous ramble that reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on whom.

“I’m ok, I just had a rough landing. I’m guessing my body went through a storm or something before I got it” I smiled and chuckled at the confused look I got at that. 

Before I could put her at ease about my mental state, we were interrupted by a small flock of Zubat who came over and very obviously and deliberately bumped into Pixie, making her drop what looked like a rock that was cut in half with a strange marking on the flat. 

They grabbed the thing, teased her about being cowardly, then ran off to a cave further down the beach. 

I can spot a plot point that obvious from ten chapters away, so I offered to help her get back what she called her precious treasure. 

 

It took like half an hour to find our way through the cave, beating up a couple of other Zubats trying to block us and some territorial water types on the way past, to find the three main Zubats who had taken Pixie’s rock. 

Now, considering I hadn’t packed any moves that were super-effective against flying types, and Pixie didn’t have anything besides Powder Snow and an ineffective Hidden Power, it should’ve been hard to take down three higher level Pokémon. This obviously was meant to have been the first boss battle in the game, but I had a little out of context on my side. 

A single ice grenade was enough to take down the two lackeys, and a psychic blast was enough to finish off the leader. 

“Alright! Fine! Take it back! We didn’t really want the stupid thing anyway!” Cried the big bad batty as all three fly-limped out, leaving behind Pixie’s treasure. 

“Thank you so much!” She exclaimed, picking it up and showing it to me. 

What I thought had been a MacGuffin, turned out to really just be a lucky charm. It was about the size of a golf ball, cut in half, with a bas-relief of what was either three clouds and a smiley face, or, more likely, Cosmog. Pixie explained that it was the only thing she had left of her old home before she came here. She didn’t remember much, but there was a storm and she was separated from her family. Now she lived in town with hopes of joining Wigglytuff’s Guild

“It’s a funny thing though,” she says, “I have to keep it in a special pocket or it keeps falling out of my bag. I’ve got no idea why”

Looking back, it could not have been more obvious who Chan had given me as a partner, but at the time I just thought it was funny

 

After having a Diglett examine our feet (a questionably effective security measure at best, if a security measure it was. I never did find out for sure), we had an interview with Chatot, Wigglytuff’s right-hand ‘mon, who seemed to try to scare us off by talking to himself about how tough the training is, but he did let us sign up when we didn’t run away. 

He led us to Wigglytuff to register as an official Exploration Team, and old Wiggles was more of an oddball than his quaver-headed adjutant. Nice bloke under all the eccentricities too, after announcing we were Team Jumper, he gave us a Treasure Bag filled with all the items I’d bought in the jump doc, then he sent us to bed at four in the afternoon. Like I said, weird and nice. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next couple of years built up the reputation of Team Jumper as a pair of oddities that delved into the toughest dungeons and came out with whatever objectives were set. 

Most of that was from my plot hunt, even the smallest hint of a whisper that sounded like it was tangentially related to something that looked vaguely plot-like, and I was volunteering us to spearhead it. 

Red herrings, every one. My plot-dar must be faulty because it was five and a half fucking years of nothing but red fucking herrings. 

 

It came as a real shock when I evolved into Marshtomp. Pixie and I had just finished beating the crap out of an Abomasnow and a couple of Steelix that had kidnapped a flock of Delibird. Their reasoning was beyond me, but I think it was something like the Pokémon equivalent of the Grinch stealing Christmas. 

Grass/Ice is a tricky combo for a Water and Ice duo, even with my extra powers, and it was the closest I’d come to fainting (since I benefitted from the whole “Pokémon never die” thing) since we cleared out a nest of Eelektrik that were squatting in Electrode’s power plant (no fucking clue why they couldn’t get along. Or why there was even a power plant when nowhere seemed to use electricity except there) a couple years prior. 

I don’t know if the plot resolved itself then, or if it was because it was a tough fight, but after the three Pokénappers were unconscious on the floor, I started glowing, and boy did that feel weird. I’d seen a heap of Pokémon evolve during my first Jump, but that didn’t prepare me for my own evolution. I could feel myself growing, my skeletal structure reshaping itself, and, weirder than that, I could feel the power of evolution flowing into me to make the changes and flowing back out as light. Professor Rowan was right when he said evolution was a mysterious process, it felt more like something was changing me than I was simply changing on my own. 

External source or no, it was a heady process, one that left me feeling exhilarated for the better part of a week. 

After that, I stopped looking for plot points, and instead set my eyes on helping Pixie find an Ice Stone. It was exceedingly rare in the games in which it originated, and it was all but unheard of here in a place based on games three generations prior. 

It took the better part of two years, exploring every Mystery Dungeon that appeared, checking in at every store within Drifblim flight range at least twice a week, even mailing collectors across the known world, but eventually Pixie became a Ninetales. Oh gosh, was she beautiful. Regular fire type Ninetales are too, but oh boy, she was a cold fox. 

I got so many dirty looks when I made that pun at the guild. Nobody talked to me for three whole days. Worth it. 

 

I evolved again at the end of the year, and six months after that Wigglytuff and Chatot retired, planning to spend the rest of their lives together in a small cottage near a Mystery Dungeon. This being Pokémon, the controversy wasn’t that they were a gay couple, but they weren’t of the same Egg Group. There were a few whispers about it, but it was mostly overshadowed by the even more controversial decision to leave Team Jumper in charge. 

It had been expected that when the pair finally stepped down, they would leave the position to their old team, Team Charm. But, again this being Pokémon, might makes right and Team Jumper was practically never wrong. There were still complaints about it though. Pixie wasn’t the problem, of course, I was. Even after seven years of committed service and almost nothing but positive experiences with me, there were still some holdouts that thought I was no good. 

It only took two weeks after I took over for a rival Exploration Guild to be set up. It was led by the trio of Crobats that Pixie and I had beaten up on my first day in the world. They claimed I would destroy the very foundation upon which Wigglytuff’s Guild was formed. 

They weren’t entirely wrong. I certainly shook the foundation a bit when I announced that I would be assigning jobs rather than letting teams pick their own. It caused a few waverers to jump ship, but most stayed long enough to find out that what I was doing made sense and actually worked pretty well. 

Not every team has a protagonist or an outworlder with strange powers leading it, so having jobs that required flying or surviving lava or whatever assigned to teams that were capable of such feats raised the success rate of the jobs. 

I also made sure that junior teams got assigned to work alongside a few select senior teams to get more experience. I figured that it worked to level up my Pokémon in the games and my first Jump, so it would work here too. 

What was really fun though, was that on more than one occasion teams from the Bat Guild would send requests for help to my Guild saying that they were stuck and couldn’t get assistance from their own Guild. I made sure Team Jumper would personally attend those operations. It was an attempted ambush about a third of the time (I say attempted since they always either failed or bailed when they saw me and Pixie), but most of the time it really was some young team who had bitten off more than they could chew and needed help. Either way, the Bat Guild was left embarrassed. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Soon enough, my time in this world was coming to an end. It wasn’t bad, all things considered. 

A week before my end date, I announced that I would be taking a holiday to explore distant lands. I wasn’t sure when I’d be back, but I promised I would return at some point. 

 

“I’m glad you’re here, but you really didn’t need to come with me,” I said to Pixie as we trekked through the forest east of Treasure Town. 

“I’m sure you’d just disappear if I wasn’t with you” she teased. 

“Well, you’re not entirely wrong” I said, tilting my head slightly. “I never did tell you where I came from, did I?”

 

I explained everything to Pixie over the next few days, filling her in on Chan, the Chain, and how my time here was nearly over. I figured that since Chan had picked her for me as my companion, she’d be brought along automatically, but I figured that it would be better to fill her in and let her decide for herself. It might mean that she thinks I’m a bit mad, but that wouldn’t be anything new. I’d spent half a decade talking about finding a plot and how this world compared to the other Pokéworld I’d visited, so this wasn’t entirely out of my ballpark. 

Surprisingly, Pixie took it all in stride, with a que sera sera attitude. I wasn’t sure if she believed I was telling the truth, but it was obvious that she believed that I believed it was the truth 

 

My final day was spent fighting through a Mystery Dungeon to the top of a mountain. It wasn’t all that hard, just long and filled with, you guessed it, a fuckton of Zubats and Golbats. 

As the sun set, Pixie and I sat on an outcropping outside the exit, watching the colours change and deepen. 

Just as the sun disappeared below the horizon, the last glimpses of light painting the sky purple and staining the clouds gold and crimson, time stopped. 

I heard a sigh from just behind me. I turned around to see Chan leaning against the side of the mountain, looking out at the sunset. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She sighed. “I chose just the right moment.”

I nod, unable to disagree with the obvious. 

“Time to move on, I suppose” I spoke softly, the beauty of the evening sky bringing out the same reverence one shows in the Sistine Chapel or the Louvre. “Would I be allowed to bring along Pixie on my travels?”

“Of course you can darlin’, she is your partner after all.” She smiled and winked at me, like she knew something I didn’t. Which, of course, she did. “She even gets to switch between alt-forms like you do. So I guess you’ll be heading on now. Onto the next world and all that jazz.”

She sighed and let the world fade away, leaving us sitting in the Warehouse, staring at the Warehome. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Where are we? What happened?” Pixie asked, alarmed at the sudden change in location. 

“Well, you remember how I said I was travelling to other worlds? I asked the cruise director and she said you could come along.” I said, trying to reassure her. “Now, don’t freak out, but I’m going to change forms. You’ll be able to as well, but just watch me first” 

With a shimmer, I changed from an almost saurian axolotl into my body mod. Thankfully I was wearing clothes. I wasn’t sure I would be so I had turned my back on Pixie to make sure she didn’t get an eyeful of dick. It also meant that I didn’t see her change forms. 

“It’s okay, Wyex. I understand everything”

Wyex? I hadn’t heard that name in twenty years. It was the name I’d used as a Pokémon trainer in my first Jump. 

I looked around in confusion, and standing before me was a seventeen year old girl of ambiguously Asian descent, her blonde hair in a high ponytail, wearing a white, short-sleeved hoodie, white pleated skirt with a thick pale pink line around near the hem, pale pink socks, and white sneakers. 

My eyes goggled. 

“Lillie?!?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the Nebby stone was probably a bit much, but it made me laugh
> 
> For those who are interested, Pixie's starting moveset was Powder Snow, Charm, Mist, & Hidden Power (Grass)  
> I randomised the Hidden Power type as well to make it fair. I didn't mention it in-story since you can't know what type it is without the weird psychic telling you or by process of elimination, so I just said it wasn't effective to simplify things
> 
> I'll be working on the next part soon so as not to leave it on a cliffhanger too long


End file.
